The NHS often launches "stunning" individual pilot projects which do not reach their full potential, according to Christine Connelly, chief information officer at the Department of Health (DH).

Speaking at the Innovation in Healthcare event in London on 12 May, she said that those running pilots often fail to share examples of technology innovation with colleagues at other organisations, and sometimes even with those at their own.

"I have a colleague who tells me that in the NHS we have more pilots than British Airways, and I think he is probably right about that," she told the audience of healthcare professionals. "It's about how we move from this idea of doing it once in exactly your own way, to finding something that has already been done and adapting it a little and then using if for your own purposes."

She said that the problem can be tackled with good information, and was the reason why the government has decided to start with an information strategy rather than an ICT strategy. Connelly explained that it was important for the government to "take a step back" and think about information and processes alongside working practices, and then to look at how the technology supports these.

She acknowledged that there are lots of new devices being used in the health service, but argued that information will persist for far longer than the technology and tools used to manipulate it.

"When you actually think about the information that's there, it may be there now on a much bigger scale because those technologies have made it possible, but the actual information that is being used has been around in some form for a very long time. But while it has been around, have you actually been able to do anything with it?" she asked.

The NHS finds mass adoption difficult even when there is evidence to support the implementation of new technology or a new way of working, said Connelly, adding that there is a much lower degree of scrutiny for a decision to not do something, than there is to implement something new.

She also said that finding annual efficiency savings of £20bn should be seen by those in the health service as a "useful crisis" for innovating and driving change.

Connelly added: "You should never let a good crisis go to waste, so when people have said to you a year ago, 'It's not the right time', today is the day to take your proposal back and say, 'How much more do you need to discover that this is the right time'."